July 16, 2021 - The Infobip Shift conference will be held this September in Zadar as the largest developer event in Europe this year!

After acquiring Shift, Infobip, the leading IT company in Croatia and the region, announced its plans for the upcoming Infobip Shift conference, which will be held on September 7 and 8 this year in Zadar at the Krešimir Ćosić Hall. The developer conference will bring together over three thousand people over two days, making this edition the largest developer event in Europe this year, reports Dalmatinski Portal. 

After Infobip organized its own DevDays development conference for many years, with the acquisition of Shift, both conferences were merged into one technology festival during which the best speakers from the developer world will gather, 60 in total, from companies such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe and many others. The Infobip Shift conference program will be held simultaneously on five stages. There will be three main stages, one intended for workshops, and the entire program will be rounded off by startups that will present their ideas and products on the Startup Tribe stage. With a rich conference program, time and a place for socializing and meetings have been provided, for which a thousand square meters are planned in front of the hall.

After the founder and executive director of the Shift conference, Ivan Burazin, was appointed a member of the Management Board for development experience at Infobip, his longtime associate Marin Tomičić was appointed project manager of the Infobip Shift conference.

"In a little less than two months, something truly unseen awaits us in this area. The program will be opened and closed by the performances of the co-founders of Infobip, Izabel Jelenić, and Silvio Kutić. In addition, we were able to secure the arrival of the world’s greatest speakers like David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework, and Val Head coming ahead of global IT giant Adobe. Finally, of course, we also took care of the part of the conference that guarantees fun, so that all visitors will be able to enjoy a unique afterparty after the end of the program. The young and motivated team gathered around the organization of this event is working hard to justify the high expectations and trust," said Marin Tomičić, project manager of the Infobip Shift conference.

He added that Infobip has almost 500 developers in Vodnjan, Zagreb, Split, and Rijeka, who come from all over Croatia.

"Previous editions of the Shift conference were held in Split, while Infobip DevDays were held in Tuhelj. In the wake of this rich spread, we decided that the Infobip Shift conference in the coming years, starting with this one, will tour the whole of Croatia without a fixed location. We want the conference to be held at a different location every year. Therefore, we decided to hold this year's edition on the coast in Zadar," he said.

The tenth jubilee edition of the conference will not only be bigger than any Shift so far, but the whole experience of following the conference will reach an unprecedented level. From speakers, partners and startups, to organizational meetings and educational workshops - Infobip Shift will be the most influential developer event this year.

"My vision since 2012 has been to create the largest global development conference, but also to strengthen Croatia's connection with the world development scene. Over the years, we have grown, and we are getting closer to our goal. With Infobip, we got what we lacked - the support of a large company to give the domestic conference that global caliber and become the leader," said Ivan Burazin, a member of the Board for Development Experience at Infobip.

Join the two-day Infobip Shift conference on September 7 and 8 this year. Discover the latest technologies and learn all from the world's top developers. More information about the conference, tickets, and schedule can be found on the official website of Infobip Shift.

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Apil 11, 2021 - The largest Croatian software company Infobip acquires Split Shift Conference, just after taking over US company OpenMarket.

In the next few years, Split will become the center of the world. At least in one thing. The first Croatian unicorn startup Infobip has completed its second acquisition, reports Novac.Jutanji.hr.

After a $300 million acquisition of a rival American company, OpenMarket, Infobip has decided to acquire a Croatian company. Namely, they have acquired the largest conference for computer programmers in Southeast Europe, Split Shift Conference.

The reason? The largest Croatian software company wants to create the largest developer conference in the world, in Croatia.

Developers are considered to be developers, but also all others who work on software development. The first step on that path will be the Infobip Shift Dev conference announced for September at the Spaladium Arena.

Izabel Jelenić, co-founder and technical director of Infobip, says that he will not announce the transaction's value.

"This is an important acquisition with which Infobip is making a strategic shift in business by focusing on developers, internal and external," says Jelenić.

He adds that the founder and director of Shift Conference, Ivan Burazin, became a member of the Infobip board for developer experience. Burazin will head the so-called Developer Experience department within the company.

Jelenić states that this department's goal is to create the largest global development conference and introduce and implement various initiatives to strengthen the development community.

Software companies compete globally for the market with classic sales and a presence in the developer community. Many build their own development communities, which know their software and thus make potential corporate customers more willing to acquire their own software products.

"We are all excited about this new collaboration. We have known Ivan Burazin for a long time, and we believe that we all have wonderful and great things ahead of us," says Jelenić.

Infobip itself, which has surpassed 3,000 employees in Europe, both the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia, internally has more than 800 developers.

Jelenić says that they are making huge progress in terms of the external development community.

"We realize them through numerous initiatives, such as our Dev Days conference, as well as by opening our products to end-users, in this case, developers," explains Jelenić.

It is less well known that Infobip has been organizing its own Dev Deyse development conferences since 2015. In Tuheljske Toplice, they would gather more than 500 programmers, mostly their own. At the last physical conference in 2019, Mate Rimac, Damir Sabol, and Ivan Burazin were guests at Dev Days.

Dev Days also attracted global program stars. They hosted Juergen Hoeller, co-founder and one of the key people of the Spring framework, a programming environment in which corporations worldwide develop more than half of their software.

But that conference never competed with Shift, which from the start was mostly geared towards the global community, so it remained smaller and focused on internal education at Infobip.

"We continue to organize the Dev Days conference, which we will now, with the acquisition of Shift, further improve and enrich with the experience and production brought by Shift. The level above this whole story is the third day of the conference, which is open to the public, and Infobip Shift will now take the stage," Jelinić emphasizes.

On the other hand, Shift has branched out in recent years, so it has started organizing conferences on fintech, artificial intelligence, and other topics. But his strongest product is still the Shift Dev conference for developers.

Before the pandemic, in 2019, Shift Dev gathered 1300 participants from all over the world in Split.

The conference, which has grown into the largest such event in Southeast Europe, is attended by top developers from Booking, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, and Shopify.

But also several programming stars such as PHP creator Rasmus Lerdorf and CSS creator Håkon Wium Lie.

Ivan Burazin is convinced that with Infobip, they can scale Shift into the world's largest developer conference and emphasizes that he did not decide to sell because of the pandemic.

"Last year was certainly harder for us than the previous ones, but when it comes to finances, we concluded it better than 2019, which was the best year for Shift ever. This year we are planning a completely new, sensational level - a developer conference that would be even bigger than any edition of Shift so far," concludes Burazin.

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